It’s that time of year where people flock to the streets to buy their children all sorts of made-in-China crap and other people screaming about the how the materialistic consumption is the end of us all.
Both screaming sides are hilarious to me because our family was non-religious and Christmas was a secular thing for us. Piles of presents under the tree was unknown to us, but my sibling and I did get at least one present each from our parents and usually did something hand-made or reasonably inexpensive for each other.
Anyway, most of those items were not ones that we cherished for ever and ever and ever, but there were some that were more memorable than others. One year, I think I was about ten, I’d been jealous of my best friend’s sewing machine toy for about half a year before Christmas and I must have been going on and on about how cool hers was. That Christmas, I unwrapped my very own toy sewing machine, and it was BETTER than my best friend’s!!! Hers had a flimsy plastic needle that basically just poked holes into paper and very thin cloth, but mine had a metal needle and I could thread it!!! It didn’t do back stitches and didn’t run fast or smooth, but it actually sewed two pieces of cloth together and I made a lot of clothes for my stuffed animals that year.
I still remember that present fondly because in the years after, I took up real actual sewing and I’d like to think it was because of that toy that sparked my interest.
My dad and I gt matching shotguns one Christmas (same model, his was 16 gauge while mine was 20 gauge). We went quail hunting together. Now that he has passed, my son has the 16 guage and we go shooting together.
The toys I still have from when I was a child are my Madam Alexander baby dolls. I think I have five of them: Star, Lisa, Sonya, and the twins. Actually I still have my Cabbage Patch doll Benita too. I thought I could pass them down to my daughter but she’s never cared about dolls! Stuffed animals only for that one.
Oh yeah, I also still have another doll I got for Christmas, a realistic newborn named Sophie. I tried to give her to my daughter when she was little and she shoved her under the crib that was next to her bed (it was for a baby I babysat). I said, you know…it’s a baby, maybe you could put it IN the crib? And she said, “But then it will *see *me!” Not a real doll enthusiast…
I don’t remember this myself, but one Christmas when I was a pre-schooler, my parents were very short of funds. They bought a huge number of balloons, inflated them overnight, put them in the living room. Story goes that my sister and I were the envy of the neighborhood. This would have been in the late 1940s.
Donnie and Marie dolls and a play stage for them when I was 7.
Cher doll, plus a bunch of clothes for her, when I was 8.
All three Charlie’s Angels dolls AND their treehouse when I was 9.
A Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist dummy when I was 10.
A banana yellow 10-speed bike when I was 12.
That’s hilarious! And sounds a lot like when I was a child. I recently asked my mom why she never got me dolls like Barbies or those feeding dolls that were all the rage when I was a kid and she shrugged and said that when given the choice, I’d always choose the stuff animals and never the ones that resembled humans. I’d also make my animals eat my sister’s humans. Never realized what a misanthrope I’d always been until then!
My favorite was one of my brother’s gifts – a western town (metal), consisting of a jail, saloon, and general store, with plastic cowboys and Indians and horses. We played with that for hours.
A clock/radio. Up until then (I think I was ten) I’d always listened to the station my parents had on their radio in the kitchen, which was a news station. I rarely heard current pop music. After I got my radio, I could hear lots of stuff I loved, like Captain and Tennille! And Leo Sayer! Yay! (At least, that’s what I thought at the time.)
Also, I could set my own alarm, instead of waiting for Mom to wake me up. More reading time! Yay!
I was always fond of anything music related, whether it be keyboards, play guitars/saxophones/drums, etc. or cassettes, later CDs, radios, stereos, anything like that. I liked my video games of course, legos. I loved Christmas. My mother was a Christmas fanatic.
Blaze, for sure. My sister and I wanted Blaze so badly, but we figured that was about as likely as getting a real live pony, so when we came down Christmas morning and there stood Blaze in the middle of the living room, it was awesome.
My parents stood in line for a Care Bear for me in 1983. Bless their hearts! My guy Bear-Bear (a Bedtime Bear) will be 30 this Christmas and we still sleep together every night.
I really got a lot of joy and use out of my Cabbage Patch Kids, which my folks also stood in line for. This stuff was a huge deal because my family was super poor so to get the “big” stuff like that for Christmas was really amazing. I am happy that I liked the toys so much!
One year they got me the soundtrack to Cocktail on tape. I’d never heard of the movie (I was 9? 10?) but it had “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” on it and I must have liked that song because that’s why they bought it. I didn’t have very many other tapes so it got a lot of play!
I got the Mego Superman toy right around when Superman the Movie came out and I had the Mego Spider-Man from sometime around then as well.
I got the Millennium Falcon and a 10 pack of action figures right around the time Empire Strikes Back came out. We didn’t really get big, expensive toys up to that point and getting that big ship was pretty awesome.
A couple years later, I got a US-1 electric trucking set, which I thought was pretty cool except the controller kept shorting out for some reason. I think I went through about 6 or 7 controllers in a few years with that.
Amazon tells me it’s been around for over 35 yrs. Well, for me that was 45 yrs ago, well over their estimate. I vividly remember walking in and seeing my older sister wrapping it up on Xmas Eve. Bugger Santa, I could play along with the charade for ONE more year.
